Rob Papen’s QUAD-RE

Here we go again! Just a wee bit time has past after the release of Punch-BD, but at the Papen factory the coarse seems to be full-speed ahead! The newest release is called QUAD and it’s a Reason Rack Extension (RE). The main concept of this beast is Subtractive synthesis, but you can alter, sculpt and distort the sound with the Phase distortion and/or Wave Shaper part of the rack. QUAD is a very versatile synth and I had a ton of fun making patches for it!

During betatesting I found this synth very easy to program and work with, but most of all; QUAD is very inspiring! Made a whole bunch of patches for the factory bank from: lush, moving pads and arps to nasty sounding leads and screechy sounds. Another pleasant side of the RE is the CPU usage, in some patches I went a little bit crazy with modulations and effects, but the CPU meter stays low (even on the 7 year old Quadcore). Even when you start building Combinators with external FX and three or four instances of this RE… Check out my combinators in the soundbank and note the [Run] behind almost all of them. 😉 You don’t have to have a beard to perform magic (it helps though!).

3 instances of Rob Papen’s QUAD (RE) used in a Combinator

Here you see three instances of Quad used in Reason’s Combinator combined with Thor and some external FX that all come with Reason. The Matrix Pattern Sequencer controls the X and Y pads of QUAD via CV input, therefore creating movement and changes to the sounds. I really liked playing around with this, it gives your sounds something extra. In most Combinators the controller knobs and buttons are programmed too. In this preset you can change the Patterns in Matrix and alter the dry/wet settings of the Reverb and Delay (or completely bypass them).

QUAD is really an all-round synth and a very useful studio tool for whatever music genre you’d like to throw at it. I’m pretty confident this RE can do it all. The patches I made can be used in various styles and genres, from raw industrial and Tekno to milder styles in the EDM family. There are also a lot of moving Pads, very suitable for movie-scores and Ambient music. I hope you enjoy (ab)using them as much as I did making them!